U.S. lost desire for war for many years

Opinion: Is Afghanistan our current Vietnam?

I was born in 1945, and it was my peer group that was subject to conscription for the Vietnam War. It presented a huge challenge. As young men sought desperate ways to evade being drafted to fight a war they didn't believe in, fathers who fought bravely in World War II were angry and denounced their sons as cowards.

Of the majority who did serve in combat, I have met many who were deeply damaged by the experience. Troop morale was notoriously low, drug use high. The use of napalm on civilians was a moral nadir in our nation's history, only exceeded by the ecological crime of using Agent Orange as a defoliant, something that has wrecked lives, both American and Vietnamese, ever since. And for what?

The aftermath throughout Southeast Asia was bloody and horrible, arguably the inevitable result of the end of colonialism. The only positive in the situation was that the U.S. populace lost its taste for war for many years.

But as soon as a bogus excuse was found, President George W. Bush, Cheney & Co. put their long-held plan to topple Saddam Hussein into action, and we see the result. Another blot on the American soul, with countless dead, wounded and sick, both American and Iraqi.

Obama was elected on a pledge of getting the U.S. out of Iraq, but when this succeeded, the Iraqis commenced to fighting their own civil war, proving another experiment in nation-building to be an illusion. It looks as though this is the trajectory in Afghanistan as well.

We shall see in 2016 what lessons have been learned, if the Republican candidate runs on a platform of war and the Democrat on a platform of peace.